Records: the RC Metalworks
'The ''Metalworks Steals the Spotlight' After the Royal Company Blacksmith was built in Rainham, the product was directly used as construction materials for a much larger version focused on mass-production of bulk metals. By May of 1377, the ''Metalworks was running at full capacity. Similar to Rainham, the Metalworks was built in a remote area, roughly half a mile north of the Thames. The construction itself was "blurry" in the minds of passers-by, but with impressive glimpses in their memory of the Royal Company both digging and building. The Metalworks itself was almost entirely underground – an odd decision at the time that was explained by the extreme weight of the walls using earthen reinforcement to spread the load. That was even somewhat true, but the whole truth was that they wanted this facility strategically defensible. The surface structures were modest, with an actual token blacksmith working in a surface shop. The stables were the route to subterranean access and the path was wide as a highway as ore went in and ingots came out. 'The Enabling Ingots' Between internal use product (a lot of the steel was going to Royal Arms product, made half a mile south in Rainham), there was plenty of wrought iron, brass and bronze output that made its way west to the hands of London craftsmen. London knew about stainless steel being made there, and spare ingots were occasionally made availble for the smiths to bid on – and it always went fast. Between the high-grade merchant iron, steel, brass and bronze, the artisans, craftsmen and smiths of London were taking off. There had never been a source this steady or reliable enough to spark local industry. Once London realized what was possible, demand spiked and production was there to meet it. The idea, as soon as the political landscape was stable enough to ensure they wouldn't be on the business end, was to license the metal-making processes to bring the rest of the world's industrial capacity up to speed. 'Stainless Reputation' Stainless steel in bulk was simply unimaginable at the time. Even the ability to make bronze cannons was still hundreds of years away for France (and the rest of the world). In fact, such bronze cannons could eventually be made available to the English nobility that were fighting in service to the Crown – or, as dryly observed after the Audit and Rectification, used against nobles who were disloyal. Bronze has several characteristics that made it preferable as a construction material: although it is relatively expensive, does not always alloy well, and can result in a final product that is "spongy about the bore", bronze is more flexible than iron and therefore less prone to bursting when exposed to high pressure; cast iron cannon are less expensive and more durable generally than bronze and withstand being fired more times without deteriorating. However, cast iron cannon have a tendency to burst without having shown any previous weakness or wear, and this makes them more dangerous to operate. Wrought iron was a key industrial development, but it didn’t have the strength that Richard needed. Brass did have the strength, but it was too heavy for the kind of mobility he envisioned, nor was it as durable as he needed. There was only one thing that would have the proper strength: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel steel]. *Steel had been produced for thousands of years, the earliest recorded examples coming from Anatolia some 4,000 years prior. The Royal Company had record of most of these, right up to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wootz_steel Wootz steel]'' and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel ''Damascus steel].'' That was the jumping point. *Starting with the creation of heat, with a little technical assistance from the Royal Order of Merlin, they turned up the temp on the crucible by feeding the fuel with forced air. That essentially pre-invented the Bessemer process (at this point, Henry Bessemer was not destined to make it from the Alt-U timeline). This was combined with Gilchrist-Thomas process (lining the converter with a basic material to remove the phosphorous), as well as the complementary Siemens-Martin process, which co-melted bar iron (or steel scrap) with pig iron. 'Right as Rainham' Back in Rainham, the experimental furnaces were large enough to re-melt the steel ingots made at the Metalworks for forming into ''discreet Royal Company products. In this case, it was all about the Royal Arms. The largest individual products were stainless steel cannons of various sized, some destined for the Royal Army, others for the Royal Navy. The smaller runs went to individual firearms (the "projectors"), the wagon-mounted mid-range firearms, as well as traditional arms and armor. Here, there was magic aplenty in the process where the ROM had trained the RC to conduct their own magic as they superheated steel, super-cooled it as necessary, increased hammering and made a few semi-exotic alloys, not the least of which included titanium. Unlike the wrought iron process which were already finding licensing by trusted smiths in England, the mass steel production was a strategic technology – and would '''not' be licensed in the foreseeable future''. Category:Hall of Records